1994 artwork by Linda S. Godfrey created for The Week newspaper in So. Wisconsin

From the Cryptid Art Department Files:

I was pretty excited back in 1994 when comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite came to Walworth County, especially since I got to write a story on his visit and also make an illustration. It was only about two years after the initial Beast of Bray Road story and I wasn’t implying any connection between Bobcat and the Beast. But I think he got a kick out of it.

Here is another drawing made a year earlier, in 1993, as an editorial cartoon for a local issue. I believe the problem at the time was that property tax rates had been frozen and school districts were trying to get them unfrozen to increase school funding. Two sides with good arguments! One of the county school districts is the Bigfoot School District in Walworth, which was named for a local Potawatomi chieftain, NOT Sasquatch.

Drawing by Linda S. Godfrey, 1993, created for The Week Newspaper, So. Wisconsin

I post them here for fun and also because some recent documentaries have shown interest in my illustrations of other cryptid artwork figures than upright canines. I have 10 years worth created for The Week alone but don’t worry: I won’t post them all. I just wanted to show I don’t play favorites when it comes to unknown creatures!

Labor Day weekend was special for me this year; I traveled to Maine to take part in the International Cryptozoology Conference hosted by Loren Coleman in Portland, and then visited a friend who is a long-time Bigfoot observer and who had promised to take me to the area in central Maine where her encounters took place. I wasn’t disappointed on either count.

Robert Schneck and L. Godfrey

The conference was a superbly planned event with wonderful people in the speaker and vendor lineups and a standing-room-only crowd of attendees. Loren and Jenny Coleman and their volunteer staff did themselves proud. In addition, I got to meet long-time online friends like Robert Schneck in person, reconnect with others and make new ones such as Snuffy Destefano, wood sculptor supreme, who created my new Bigfoot carving pictured above (see his Facebook page).

My online friend, “Suzy,” who is of part Wabanaki ancestry, and I headed north the next day. We’ve corresponded for several years. Suzy had only told a few people about her mid-60s to early 70s childhood experiences with a Hairy Man she calls “Wabou” and two smaller creatures that may have been his mate and child, or two juveniles. Her story is amazing, however, and she finally decided to go public with some of it in a new video in order to show people that these creatures should not be killed. (You can see the film at this Maine community TV station here.)

It’s Suzy’s story to tell, as I’ve always said to her, and she does a good job on the video. She and I visited the property she discusses in the film, and it tallied in every way with what she had originally described to me, as did the adjoining woods where she spent so many days beginning at about age 7 and continuing to her early teens when she and her mother moved away. We received a fascinating corroboration from a nearby resident whose property was adjacent to the woods where she spent much of her youth, after we asked him if he had noticed anything strange around the property. He said that beyond the blood-curdling screams at night there was one other thing.

His house was on a small lake, and he said he was puzzled at finding large piles of open clam shells near the shore. Some looked crushed or bitten, and he could not think of any animal known to inhabit that area that ate clams or would leave a huge pile of them. He showed us where the piles had been–they were recently washed away by some severe storms, although a few shells did remain to mark the spot.

Bigfoots have been observed eating clams by other eyewitnesses. Suzy said that Wabou, who was over seven feet tall and covered with very dark, mahogany-colored hair that lightened to reddish tones in summer, would sit in the water with his big legs splayed out in front of him and eat clams as fast as he could chomp them out of their shells.

Suzy reveals many more observations on the video, but I can mention a few other things she has told me. Their teeth, she said, did not have overbites or underbites when the jaw was closed. Instead, they were very square, all the same size and met on edge rather than overlapping. When they grinned it looked more like a grimace, and Wabou would grin at her often, perhaps in imitation of her own smiles. Wabou also taught her to swim, she said, by carrying her into the lake on his shoulders until they reached the deep part, and then pushing her off into the water. He would then reach up to support her as she splashed and learned to stay afloat.

In return, she brought a deck of cards and attempted to teach them to play a simple game or two, but didn’t have much luck. She also brought them white bread, their favorite, and fruits as treats. Most of their days were spent in a simple structure of tree branches bent and twisted together so that pine boughs could be laid over the top. They rested a lot in daytime, said Suzy, because they were mainly out at night. In the dark, she said, their eyes glowed red and she could always find the small one that way when they played hiding games in the trees.

The woods where Suzy encountered the Hairy Man.

And no, they did not smell pine-tree fresh. She said after a day with them, she always needed a bath. Her parents were preoccupied with their own problems, and allowed her to roam at will. When she had to suddenly leave her beloved friends, she wanted to give them something to remember them by, so she tossed a pair of purple, hip-hugger jeans into their nearest day-hut while they were out. “It was all I could grab in the few minutes I had,” she said.

On our trip, Suzy took me to the nearby woods where her large friends lived, although unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to wait for them properly. She made a vocalization that she said was the call Wabou would respond to when she needed him, but didn’t hear an answer. She also made rock clicks timed in a certain pattern, and twice there was a single, far-off click in return. We each saw something large moving between trees in the distance, but couldn’t make out what it was. She began feeling ill and wanted to leave immediately. I had a weird tightness in my stomach but I stayed a few minutes longer to take a few pictures. Suzy had gone straight back to the road where her car was parked. I turned around to head back too, but soon realized I was not headed toward the car, but in the direction of the rock clicks and whatever we’d seen moving in the distance. Luckily Suzy called for me and I was able to turn correctly and pick my way through the underbrush. After I made it back onto the asphalt road, Suzy heard footsteps crashing through the woods in our direction. We decided to go. She believes we had definite “company,” but that it was probably not her Wabou. But there was one more corroboration…

After the video–which doesn’t tell about our trip or reveal where in Maine this all occurred–was shown, the producer received a message from a Micmac man who had seen the video on TV. The producer told Suzy that the man said he had seen a tall Hairy Man in the tree line within a mile or so of those woods. The only date given was “some time ago,” but the closeness to Suzy’s childhood home was a good indication (along with other known sightings in that state) that Hairy Man does exist in central Maine, and that at least the one known as Wabou had a very gentle side!

Just out, a new CNN article that features some eyewitnesses from my books and interview questions with me as well. It’s great to see some even-handed reporting on this topic.

Also, getting close: this weekend, Sunday Sept. 3 is the International Cryptozoological Conference in Portland, Maine! Tickets still available at the door. I’ll be speaking around 11 am and will be at my table to sign books and chat the rest of the time. Totally excited to be on this roster of speakers and to take my first trip to Maine! Hope to see some of you there!

It’s been over 25 years since, as a Walworth County newspaper reporter for The Week, I broke the news that people were calling our local animal control officer to say they had seen what looked like a werewolf around Elkhorn, Wisconsin on Bray Road. People are still calling, emailing and messaging me, and yes, there are still sightings of large wolves or other canines walking upright — as well as reports of what witnesses say looks like a reddish-furred Bigfoot and odd light phenomena on Bray Road — but also widely spread around the US, Canada, and even South America. Welcome to my blog, where I share sightings, news, appearance schedules, links to podcasts, a form to report your encounter, and much more. Thanks for checking in here, and please hit the follow button for update notices!

Skeptics like to characterize unknown creature eyewitnesses as unsophisticated, uneducated or even under the influence of drugs or alcohol. What I have found over 25 years of reports is that these eyewitnesses are actually almost always sober, and that as a group they are quite diverse in profession, gender and age. Even young children are strongly represented, although they usually don’t report their encounters until they are much older.

I’ve received several reports lately from people whose sightings occurred decades earlier, when the witnesses were children or pre-teens. The following is a transcript of a phone interview I had with a woman from south of Eau Claire who saw a puzzling creature when she was a pre-teen. She did not want the exact location revealed and asked me to keep her identity private as well, which I always do when requested. I met with her in person, too, and found her to be a very cordial and sensible person. She simply happened to have once encountered something most children would consider a nightmare – a black, hairy being with “spikes” on its head that looked like horns or ears.

In her words:

“I grew up south of Eau Claire, and one day I was out in our woods a distance of a football field and a half, alongside a path to a trash-burning area. I had a tire swing and was playing on it when I saw it. It peeked from behind a tree halfway between me and the house. It was a black creature, looked like it had ears or horns. It was solid black, on two legs, and it was the same size as me at that time, about four and one half feet.

When it stepped out [from behind the tree] I could see half the body. It had a regular hand. I couldn’t see the feet. Its leg looked like a human leg; it had knees. All I could see on the face was its eyes. They were yellow but not reflecting any light because we were in the woods where it was shaded. Its arm was hanging down, and may have been slightly longer than a human’s. It was a straight-on shot. It seemed like everything was three-dimensional. The spikes on its head could have been ears, hair that spiked up, horns, or tree branches that were behind him.

It reminded me of a human but because it was all black I thought it must have been a demon because I had never heard of Bigfoot at that age. I closed my eyes and started praying The Lord’s Prayer and when I opened them it was gone. I can’t remember if I ran to the house right then or not. I waited a few days before going back and never saw it again. But after seeing it, I’d wake up at night for months to hear either a scratching or a tapping on the window. I always put the covers over my head. It was quite often at first – every night – then slowly tapered off. I remember being scared out of my wits. It was almost like it wanted me to come with it or come out to play.

My parents still own the acreage. I never told them about it. My own kids wouldn’t go play out there.”

So what did she see peeping at her in those woods? I include here my own sketch interpretation, which the woman told me was pretty close. To me, the description and behavior scream juvenile Bigfoot. Young Sasquatch’ are often noticed watching children at play and following them home, and I think this conclusion is logical here. Except for those things on the head. That’s not a Bigfoot trait, but the woman may be correct in her guess that the “ears” were just branches in the woods behind it.

Other possible identities just don’t jibe with the report. A bear cub or deer? Not with “regular hands.” An upright canine? Goatman? These also seem unlikely for a creature with human hands, knees and a long arm hanging down at its side. Some might say it was a pukwudjie, or little person of the forest described in lore of the Algonquian, Wampanoag and other Native American peoples, but the pukwudjies are often described as only knee-high and covered with smooth gray skin rather than black fur.

If it was a juvenile Bigfoot, there may be a family group that is still somewhere in the area. In Monsters Among Us, I told the story of a family who believed a Bigfoot was watching their children play in their back yard near Neillsville (only half an hour east of this sighting), and who had seen several of them over the past five years. The whole Eau Claire area is surrounded by forests and wildlife preserves that would create prime habitat for Bigfoot.

One more note: this report is also one of a growing number I’ve received wherein the witness prays or calls out to God in fear, and the creature is immediately gone. I do not know for sure what this creature was, but even though it appeared years ago and did no physical harm, residents in that part of the state may want to keep an eye on their tire swings!